Have Vietnam’s Wildmen Killed Humans?
Posted by: Loren Coleman on July 25th, 2012
Jeff H. Johnson is a well-known artist. His sculpture of the Patterson Bigfoot (above and below) is an important resin model, and not a toy. His cryptid replicas are familiar to most researchers.
Johnson was recently in Dallas, working on larger sculptures. He wrote the following, concerning an interaction about the Vietnam Wildmen or Nguoi Rung, that occurred there.
One of the people I was working with is a Vietnamese man named Chung. I have known him for years, and he is a quiet, serious, and hard working man. I saw the Destination Truth episode about the wildman in Vietnam, and thought I would ask him about it, to see if he had ever heard anything about it while he lived there.
I asked him, “Have you ever heard of the Vietnamese Wildman?”
I explained it is something like the Bigfoot of North American fame, an ape-like creature. He said “Yes,” and that they are quite violent.
Chung said that some people had been killed by this creature, all due to a group of men that had shot one. He said that (while drawing a map with his finger) a group of men had traveled from Laos, cut through the edge of Cambodia, and at the border of North/South Vietnam, encountered and shot one of the “Wildmen.” Then they fled back to Laos. Apparently, revenge was on the mind of the creatures, who attacked a small village in the area where the shooting took place, killing some residents. Chung made stomping and tearing motions while he described what they did to the victims.
I asked him when this took place, and he said about seven years ago. I then asked how he knew of the story, and he said he was visiting relatives in Vietnam while on vacation, and it was on the news there, even showing photos (of the victims, I believe). Interesting story, and I felt the need to relate it to you. Chung is a serious guy, and can be taken as such. So, somewhere in the media in Vietnam, there could be this story. Makes you wonder how many other “incidents” never reach Western news. I looked on a map when I got home that day, and the layout was exactly as Chung described it. Wanted to share this, Jeff
Nguoi Rung. Source: The Field Guide to Bigfoot and Other Mystery Primates
About Loren Coleman
Loren Coleman is one of the world’s leading cryptozoologists, some say “the” leading living cryptozoologist. Certainly, he is acknowledged as the current living American researcher and writer who has most popularized cryptozoology in the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Starting his fieldwork and investigations in 1960, after traveling and trekking extensively in pursuit of cryptozoological mysteries, Coleman began writing to share his experiences in 1969. An honorary member of Ivan T. Sanderson’s Society for the Investigation of the Unexplained in the 1970s, Coleman has been bestowed with similar honorary memberships of the North Idaho College Cryptozoology Club in 1983, and in subsequent years, that of the British Columbia Scientific Cryptozoology Club, CryptoSafari International, and other international organizations. He was also a Life Member and Benefactor of the International Society of Cryptozoology (now-defunct).
Loren Coleman’s daily blog, as a member of the Cryptomundo Team, served as an ongoing avenue of communication for the ever-growing body of cryptozoo news from 2005 through 2013. He returned as an infrequent contributor beginning Halloween week of 2015.
Coleman is the founder in 2003, and current director of the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine.
I first ecountered a report of this cryptid 11 years ago. I was talking with a father who had just dropped his girls off for a Backstreet Boys concert (I was a limo driver for a different group). We were talking in the parking lot waiting for the concert to end. The gentleman was talking about life in general. He was an engineer for the railways. He was an engineer in Vietnam. He told me that the bodies of fallen soldiers would be brought in and the body bags would litter the fields awaiting transport out the next morning. He casually related that guards would be posted because the apes would come out of the jungle to eat the bodies. Very odd. Very truthful. The story was not focused on the apes but on the fallen soldiers and the sentry duty. And there are no known apes in Vietnam.
There are over 7000 Sumatran Orangutans living in a smaller area of Sumatra than the jungles of Vietnam where these “wildmen” as reported to live.
A viable breeding population of 1000 to 3000 animals is actually possible if these Vietnamese jungles are as remote as they appear on Google Earth
Remember in 2008 when a population estimated at 125,000 Mountain Gorillas was located in the Congo? Look at where they were reportedly found and compare that to the area in Vietnam where the “Wildman” is reported to live…VERY similar land area
Exactly, posters.
One thing supposed skeptics never seem to spend any time thinking about: the obvious on the ground circumstances that make the reports plausible.
Vietnam in the Sixties was not the place for cryptid research. (The saola placidly browsed right through a whole series of wars without being documented.) The nature of the reports makes two things rather evident: (1) the natives – just as with the saola – knew about it; (2) the soldiers took it as tropical-jungle-matter-of-course.
There seems to be something to this critter. Because eyewitnesses most definitely constitute evidence.
I’ve been searching for a story and this is the closest I’ve gotten….
I read it in a book quite a while back and the gist was that there were some soldiers (American) in Vietnam who were chased through a swamp by large “things” that, if I recall correctly, had glowing eyes.
They shot at them and they still kept coming. From what I remember, they finally made it to a river and from there they jumped on a boat; all the while, they were pursued by these “things”.
Does anyone know which story I’m talking about and where I might find another copy of it?
This was one of the ones that left me shocked and awestruck, as it seemed so real….